


And Who Shall I Say Is Calling?

by John the Alligator (Chyronic)



Category: The Sandman (Comics), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Present Tense, Sandman series spoilers, episode format, takes place after The Wake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyronic/pseuds/John%20the%20Alligator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two cities which are his concern do not appear to be any different from the lifeless Fata Morganas he’s seen.  Their silhouettes shift every time he looks at them, and Dream does not blink.  The roads leading in buck and writhe in front of him and behind, but stay constant under his feet.</p>
<p>The mountains are hazy and obscured; below him, Night Vale resolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Who Shall I Say Is Calling?

**Author's Note:**

> _Who in these realms of love? Who by something blunt?_  
>  And who by avalanche, who by powder?  
> Who for his greed? Who for his hunger?  
> And who shall I say is calling?  
> \- Leonard Cohen, “Who By Fire”

Sometimes we believe we are one thing. Later we will believe that we are something else. We are never correct. We are really nothing at all.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Good morning, listeners. As you all ought to know, I lied and have lied. If you are hearing me now, or in the future, or in some far distant past: know that you are something, that you are someone, and that you are here. If I exist, then so do you, and together, in this moment, we are alive.

The City Council would like to inform you, personally, that a new Department of Expiration has been instituted as part of the city government. Its purpose is to monitor and account for citizen deaths. So from now on, if you die, report it to the Department of Expiration straight off. They'll need age, location, name, and cause of death. Remember, it's just your civic duty!

Local scientists and interested observers from outside the state concur that flight patterns of pigeons within a ten-mile radius of city limits have been disturbed during the past week. To be specific, we are experiencing an excess of pigeons. They do not appear to be particularly alarmed by this. The pigeons, I mean. The scientists are quite upset. Something about the delicate balance of our local ecology, and the ultimate unsustainability of human habitation in the middle of a desert.

But I don't think any of us are interested in that right now, are we? Better to focus on something that actually affects us at the moment, this early on in the day. So that being said, listeners, here's the traffic.

All cars and City-licensed rickshaws have been proceeding as normal down whatever roads their drivers chose for them, within reason. Ouroboros Road is closed pending rerouting, and all citizens caught within it are experiencing a Type Six time loop. Do not be alarmed, citizens, when you receive this message. The missing time will be made up for eventually, and--once you are hearing this--when you hear this--you are safe now. 

Pending resolution of the events of last Thursday night’s PTA meeting, bicycles within city limits are working only with kinetic energy kept in springs. Since the usage of coiled springs as batteries is remarkably inefficient, we at Night Vale Community Radio recommend that travel with bicycles be suspended for the time being. 

The block between the Public Library and the Private Library has been closed due to conflicting ideologies. Researchers and casual readers in the area may find themselves called upon to defend their political opinions with any weapons near to hand. 

Meanwhile, we are receiving reports that a strange man is walking down Route 800. He appears unperturbed by the dust and the occasional passing cars, say citizen reporters from the Night Vale Zoo. As he passed by, they say, all the birds in the zoo took to the air, in unison, throwing themselves bodily against their enclosures. In addition, they say, he is dressed entirely in white.

Now, despite the Visitable Night Vale campaign, we do get fairly few tourists. If he is one, I should hope that we will all show him the appropriate hospitality.

If you’re keeping an eye out, I hear he’s passing by the car lot. 

-

The lines between dreams and gods are more unclear than either would like. Gods feed on belief, and dreams on their dreamers; the fact that dreams function only within the Dreaming is a difference held up as definitive by both sides.

Of course gods are more powerful. Some dreams are more powerful than others as well, the combined might of every facet of a skerry or a single, millenium-long nightmare. Of course gods only come to the Dreaming to be born and to die. They’re bigger than ordinary dreams, needing more than each other to define themselves against. Old nightmares leave the Dreaming for the mortal world as well.

Dreams are fashioned by mortal minds and Morpheus’ hands. Or, at least, they were; now Lord Morpheus is dead.

The being that was Daniel Hall, that still wears Dream’s mantle with some residual discomfort, walks down to Night Vale on a dry and dusty spring day.

-

Now, the community calendar. Today is a Wednesday, which is not when we generally get the calendar, but all is well. All is well. All is well. Today, all is well. Tomorrow, rain. Blood. Possibly frogs. But that is tomorrow.

On Friday, the Night Vale Witches’ Association opens submissions for their first annual art contest! Any citizen between the ages of twelve and eighty-six may enter. Choice of medium is up to you, dear listener, you artist, although they do recommend non-flammable materials. The topic is “If you believe it, you can do it. With the dark arts”. 

I’d like to encourage any and all of you who are eligible to enter. The contest is only in its first year, and I’m sure we’re all interested in supporting the arts here in our little town. And what an inspirational topic. Will you reflect on times that you wouldn’t have been able to accomplish something, were it not for your singleminded belief and handy application of forbidden magic? (Although not, of course, the really forbidden magic. Never that, listeners.) Or perhaps speculate on your future? There are so many choices. Starting Friday, you can leave your submission under the rock by your house. You know the one. They’ll be by to pick it up.

Saturday and Sunday City operations are closed for inspection. Since this includes the newly instituted Department of Expiration, please take care not to die on either of these days. It would be extraordinarily inconvenient. 

Monday there will be a new calendar, and a new month. Soon, a new year.

-

There are two towns entirely outside of the Dreaming, and they have lately been called to Dream’s attention. Some places are just connected tenuously to his realm, filled with people who only dream once a fortnight, whose existences are more closely tied to one of the other Endless. But those places where the siblings’ respective power shifts are not islands, entirely removed from Dream’s sight.

This desert is not one of them. It is huge and largely empty, or rather it resolves into emptiness from a distance; if one is close enough, as Dream has been finding, it will resolve into emptiness from nearby, as well. In the middle distance, it is full of mirages that shift with every second of sunlight. They play across the sand and obscure the mountains that define the edges of human habitation. 

Dream shares mirages with his youngest sister. He should have a greater claim than elsewhere on the physical world here, and he doesn’t. Here, his fingers brush against the mortal world like glass and slide off.

The two cities which are his concern do not appear to be any different from the lifeless Fata Morganas he’s seen. Their silhouettes shift every time he looks at them, and Dream does not blink. The roads leading in buck and writhe in front of him and behind, but stay constant under his feet.

The mountains are hazy and obscured; below him, Night Vale resolves.

-

The strange man from earlier has made it into town. It’s quite a trek on foot; we at the station are impressed, I must say. For the past couple blocks, he has been followed by pigeons. We have not received confirmation on this front, but rumor has it that his feathery entourage is approximating the surplus of pigeons our scientists were so badly worried about. 

Citizens who have tried to talk to him report that he is not impolite, but somewhat… brusque. He is, however, feeding the pigeons. 

Listeners, I must confess that I was worried; a stranger, walking into Night Vale, down the road that leads to Desert Bluffs? I didn’t want to make any baseless accusations, of course, but I wondered. That said, I don’t think any malicious denizen of Desert Bluffs would take the time to feed pigeons what, by all reports, appears to be perfectly normal yellow grain. Human flesh, perhaps, but that’s probably bad for pigeons, and is no indicator of goodness. 

So with all that in mind, my worries are assuaged. He’s probably all right--

Night Vale. Listeners. Dear listeners. I’ve received a new report. The man turned down First Street a couple minutes ago, and appears to be proceeding at a casual walk in our very direction. And he--well. I am receiving reports--

I don’t know how else to put this, listeners. People have said he speaks like me. I’m sure all of you know exactly how strange that is.

I’m sending an intern to investigate.

-

Dream feels things out more clumsily than he’d like; the presence of a dream is obvious, but what manner of thing is completely obscure. He didn’t make this dream, and he suspects his predecessor didn’t either. It’s inside the building, he knows that much.

Here, outside the Dreaming, his options are limited, and he doesn’t wish to draw attention. This isn’t even a check-up, because he doesn’t know what he’s here to see. Lucien might call it self-indulgence. Dream brings one hand to the emerald inside his white trenchcoat, and looks more carefully.

There is something inside this building and it is not much larger than a man. It is very, very old, but shifting rapidly enough to maintain a veneer of youth. It is not, to his surprise, a nightmare, as most errant dreams are. 

Daniel isn’t used to this, this isn’t his purview. His predecessor barely left the Dreaming, before the events that led to Daniel--to _Dream’s_ ascendance. The mortal world is Death’s to hold, Destruction’s to describe, Desire’s to shape and Destiny’s to narrate; it is Delirium’s to alter and Despair’s to twist; it is never, never his. He shouldn’t even be here. 

He is beginning to suspect that this dream should. As it is, it sits in the center of a spiderweb of mortal thought and trust. Dream still can’t quite tell what it is. Not a nightmare, but something hungry and deftly controlling; not his predecessor’s creation, but ancient. 

A pigeon takes this moment to land on Dream’s shoulder, and the emerald falls out into his hand; the delicate eavesdropping connection he’s maintaining between himself and the dream who doesn’t know he’s here breaks.

It shifts into something much sharper, and the layers obscuring the shape of this lost dream part briefly. The shared would-be god that echoes over the airwaves of this town loses what little humanity it has for a second, which is enough.

-

Intern Laurel reports back, by text--wow, xe types fast!--that the strange man is taller than any person xe’s ever seen, and pale as paper, like an ink drawing that hasn’t been colored in. 

His eyes were black as the night sky, complete with points of light, and he spoke with my voice. That’s--that’s what xe said. He spoke with my voice.

Laurel says he’s headed for the station.

That… that aside, listeners. [The weather](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bntot9LAY08).

...

Listeners, I’m not sure what’s going on. I don’t feel right. Intern Laurel came back perfectly fine, and came into the studio to tell me xyr experiences. Xe had a perfectly cordial conversation with the pale man outside, but xe can’t quite remember what they talked about.

Xe is, however, adamant that he sounded like me. And I suppose that’s not impossible, and it could simply be anxiety that is eating at me. It has, after all, been a long week so far. I’m sure I’m fine. I’m just… so…

_I am hungry, and I am lost, and I am alone. Bring me your dreams. Bring me your dreams._

**[static]**  


-

In retrospect, as with all mistakes, it is obvious. He found the smiling patron god of the brighter town with little difficulty; the fact that its equivalent was more sequestered and kinder in Night Vale shouldn’t have thrown Dream off so. One is his own echo and the other isn’t, but they serve the same purpose to their own tiny worlds. The darker town is slower and more subtle in its ways, but the underlying process is the same. If he disturbed both of them trying to feel out their isolating small gods, then at least he did so symmetrically.

They will be as they were by sunrise; Dream made sure of it. Sunrise hits Desert Bluffs slightly before it comes to Night Vale, which is also just as well. 

He’s never lost dreams before. Perhaps he still hasn’t; these picked themselves up and left, as gods do. They still feel like dreams. He wouldn’t make this statement to a pantheon, especially since some of them could still destroy him, but the difference is largely one of scale and Dream’s own attentiveness.

In this case, he allows it.

Faintly disconcerted, but satisfied to leave these small islands outside the Dreaming to their little patron gods, Daniel goes away.

-

The pale man who visited us has left. Perhaps he was never here. I doubt that, but it is possible. Almost anything is possible.

Night Vale--dear Night Vale--listen to me. No matter what, no matter how insurmountable the world outside you may appear to be, no matter how entirely unavoidable the eventual void, you are a single point of light. In and of yourself, you matter. You exist. You are a person, however you prefer to define that. You are alive.

I do not believe I’m a monster. I do not believe any of us are monsters. Night is falling, listeners. I can only know what I believe, and what I think I know, but I think we’re going to be all right.

Night Vale, if you can believe in anything, believe in yourselves. It might help you later, if you need a little help.

It’s been a long day, dear listeners, but all is well.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my midterm for the Sandman Exco, Fall 2013.
> 
> Notes on outside inspirations used in text:
> 
> Our minds are powerful things. There is evidence that we can will things into existence. So believe in yourself, it might help you later. <https://twitter.com/actual_cecil/status/391155562592735232>
> 
> Sometimes we believe we are one thing. Later we will believe that we are something else. We are never correct. We are really nothing at all. [https://twitter.com/actual_cecil/status/391038076010524673](https://twitter.com/actual_cecil/status/391155562592735232)
> 
> Bring me all of your dreams, you dreamers. I feed upon them and I am hungry. Oh so very hungry. Bring me all of your dreams. [https://twitter.com/actual_cecil/status/390292349529501696](https://twitter.com/actual_cecil/status/391155562592735232)
> 
> The name, idea, and mission of the Department of Expiration belong to Aaron Diaz and _Dresden Codak_.


End file.
